Type Privately held Revenue USD$110 million (2014) | Number of locations 8 Founded 1956 | |
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Industry Architecture, Engineering & Design, Commercial & Residential Construction Key people Charles Russo (Senior Principal & CEO) Services Design, Investigation, and Rehabilitation Headquarters Waltham, Massachusetts, United States Founders Frank Heger, Howard Simpson, Werner Gumpertz | ||
Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc. (SGH) is a privately held ENR 500 engineering firm that designs, investigates, and rehabilitates structures and building enclosures. Their work encompasses commercial, institutional and residential buildings, transportation, water/wastewater, nuclear, science, and defense structure projects throughout the U.S. and over twenty foreign countries. SGH has 500 employees at seven locations in Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York City, San Francisco, Southern California and Washington, D.C.
Contents
Services
SGH provides services in Commercial, Institutional and Residential Buildings, Transportation, Nuclear, Water/Wastewater and Science/Defense structures. SGH services are supported by technical capabilities, including: Building Envelope Engineering, Structural Engineering, Engineering Mechanics, Building Science and Construction Engineering. Their practice encompasses design, investigation and performance evaluation, repair and rehabilitation of constructed works. SGH implements innovative techniques for design, analysis, and project management. Their laboratories supports design and investigation work with material, mechanical, and environmental testing. The majority of their projects are buildings in diverse markets, including educational, industrial, healthcare, and residential.
Background
Founded in 1956 by three former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors - Howard Simpson, Werner Gumpertz, and Frank Heger - SGH specializes in structural design, historic preservation and evaluation of building exteriors. The firm has a reputation for assessing structural or interior damage to buildings. Nationally, SGH is recognized as an expert on the science and causes of structural failure. For example, when mirror-glass panels began falling off Boston's John Hancock Tower and had to be temporarily replaced with plywood in 1973, SGH was hired to analyze what went wrong. More recently, SGH was hired by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to investigate the collapse of New York's World Trade Center and assess the Towers' structural response to impact damage and fire after the September 11, 2001 attacks. NIST retained SGH to develop computer models simulating the towers’ structural response to aircraft impact and subsequent fires. Several studies, conducted by NIST and its consultants, provided input for the SGH study, including aircraft impact analysis, fire dynamics and heat transfer models. NIST also tested structural steel recovered from the WTC site to determine its mechanical and metallurgical properties including temperature-dependent thermal expansion, modulus, plastic flow, and creep properties. SGH first developed models of components, connections, and subsystems of the WTC towers and studied their structural response to fire-induced temperatures over time. Using results of such studies, SGH developed computationally efficient global models of the towers and performed FE analyses from initial impact through each tower’s collapse.
Financial Development
Under the leadership of Glenn R. Bell as Chief Executive Officer from 1995 through 2016, SGH experienced dramatic growth. In his tenure, the firm expanded from two offices with $14 million in annual revenue to six offices and nearly $104 million in revenue. According to a 2007 interview, the company’s revenues grew 15-20 percent annually the last 5–10 years. In addition to daily corporate management, Glenn led strategic planning, rebranding, and company reorganization - while maintaining the best of its existing culture with low staff turnover. Charles J. Russo took over as CEO on January 1, 2017.
From 2001 to 2005, SGH increased total revenues more than 72.2 percent. By 2006, SGH had become a $50 million, 300-person firm, with the Waltham office accounting for $30 million and 160 employees. Revenue increased 25 percent from 2006 to 2007, while revenue from the New York office doubled between 2006 and 2007. Total billings for fiscal 2007 amounted to approximately $70 million (up from $37.1 million in 2003, $46.5 million in 2005, and $56.7 million in 2006). One factor widely credited with contributing to SGH's growth was a new marketing strategy which introduced the company to a nationwide audience through seminars, publications, and newsletters.
Projects
The firm has influenced the design or restoration of many recognizable structures, including Spaceship Earth, the 160-foot (49 m)-diameter geodesic sphere at the entrance of Epcot Center; New York’s Grand Central Terminal; and the Hultman Aqueduct in Massachusetts. Further, masonry design (construction and reconstruction) always has been a major part of the SGH’s project portfolio. These skills have been used on several high-profile and/or award-winning masonry projects, including both contemporary designs and historic restorations. Some projects in these categories include: the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (Newark, New Jersey), the Miami Dade Center/Stephen P. Clark Government Center (Miami, Florida), and the Bowdoin College Chapel Restoration (Brunswick, Maine).
Awards
SGH has picked up several industry awards over the years for its services. In 2013, they received 15 national and regional project awards and recognitions. This included two lifetime achievement awards, one international "best of" award, and 4 "top firms" rankings from the Boston and San Francisco Business Journals. Since 2004, SGH has ranked as a "Best Firm to Work For" by Structural Engineer and CE News magazines, and has been ranked in the top 10 of structural firms since 2005.
On March 8, 2006, SGH received the Gold Engineering Excellence award from the American Council of Engineering Companies of Massachusetts (ACEC-MA). ACEC-MA recognized SGH for its project, Global Analysis of World Trade Center Towers Subjected to Impact Damage and Fire. The entry detailed SGH's work for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) determining the events sequence in the WTC collapse on 9-11. The annual Engineering Excellence program recognizes exceptional performance in engineering. Winning firms are ranked as silver, gold, platinum, and Grand Conceptor.